2026 Advanced Addiction Psychopharmacology Course

Christina A. Brezing, MD is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry in the Division on Substance Use Disorders at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and a Research Scientist at New York State Psychiatric Institute where she studies how applications of different technology improves the assessment and treatment of substance use disorders. She is the Principal Investigator of a NIDA-funded grant to study novel pharmacotherapy and applications of technology in the treatment of Cannabis Use Disorder. She is a Columbia Hadar Fellow and has received research support through the Columbia Smither’s Foundation, the Dartmouth Center for Technology and Behavioral Health, and the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education. She has served as a co-investigator or study physician on numerous NIDA-funded medication treatment trials for substance use disorders at Columbia’s Substance Treatment and Research Services (STARS) program, and clinically, she treats patients with severe and persistent mental illness and co-occurring substance use disorders. She is the director of the addiction curriculum for the Columbia psychiatry residency and co-director of the curriculum for the Columbia ACGME-T32 Substance Use Disorder Fellowship and the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry’s Advanced Addiction Psychopharmacology course.

Dr. Brezing attended Duke University for her undergraduate degree in biology with a focus in biochemistry, and completed her medical degree at the University of Florida where she graduated Alpha Omega Alpha and with honors in research. During medical school, she completed the Howard Hughes Medical Institute-National Institutes of Health (HHMI-NIH) Research Scholars Program studying neuroimaging of impulse control disorders, including pathological gambling, compulsive sexual behavior, and shopping. She completed psychiatry residency at Harvard Medical School-Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital, where she served as chief resident in addiction, in addition to a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded T32 research fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry at Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute. She is double board certified in addiction and adult psychiatry.

Connie Guille, MD is a Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Obstetrics and Gynecology and is the Director of the Women’s Reproductive Behavioral Health Division at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). She completed her Psychiatry Residency training and subspeciality training in Reproductive Psychiatry at Yale University. The focus of her clinical and clinical research is in the integration of mental health and addiction treatment in women’s health, specifically for the treatment of substance use disorders among pregnant and postpartum women. Since 2011 Dr. Guille has been federally and privately funded to conduct clinical research focused on the development, and evaluation of patient and provider-informed, technology enhanced, novel treatments for Perinatal Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders. She receives funding from the National Institute of Health, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and private foundations such as the Duke Endowment to develop treatments to improve women’s health.

Frances Rudnick Levin, MD is the Kennedy-Leavy Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University and the Chief of the Division on Substance Use Disorders at NYSPI/Columbia University. For over twenty years, she served as the Director of the Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship Program at New York Presbyterian Hospital and is the PI of a T32 NIDA funded Substance Abuse Research Fellowship which has been continuously funded since 1994. Dr. Levin has been NIH funded for over 30 years and has over 350 articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics including treatments of substance use disorders, assessment and treatment of co-occurring psychiatric illnesses and vulnerabilities associated with substance use disorders. She serves as the Medical Director of two SAMHSA-supported national training initiatives, the Providers’ Clinical Support System (PCSS), a SAMHSA-supported national training and mentoring initiative focused on addressing the opioid use disorder crisis as well as the State Targeted Response technical assistance grant (the Opioid Response Network) that provides technical assistance for the prevention, training and recovery of substance use disorders with a focus on opioids and stimulants. She served as president of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry, Chair of the APA council on Addictions and is the President-elect of the American Professional Society of ADHD and Related Disorders (APSARD).

John J. Mariani, MD is an Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and a Research Psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI). Dr. Mariani is the Director of the Substance Treatment and Research Service (STARS) in the Division on Substance Use Disorders at the NYSPI/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Dr. Mariani attended the New York University School of Medicine, completed a psychiatry residency at the Beth Israel Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and an addiction psychiatry clinical and research fellowship at Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He is the current president of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry and is the medical advisor to the Major League Baseball Players Association. Dr. Mariani’s research is focused on the development of novel medication treatments for substance use disorders and related co-occurring psychiatric disorders. He has received grant funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), as well as private foundations. Dr. Mariani has over 50 peer-reviewed scientific publications, in addition to a dozen book chapters on the treatment of substance use disorders.

Dr. Nunes is Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center and New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI), Principal Investigator (multiple PI) of the Greater New York node of the NIDA Clinical Trials Network (CTN), and a practicing psychiatrist Board Certified in Addiction Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine. He has devoted his career to research on the treatment of cocaine, opioid and other substance use disorders and is nationally and internationally recognized for his work on the evaluation and treatment of co-occurring depression, alcohol, cocaine and opioid use disorders and the development of pharmacological and behavioral treatments for substance use disorders as well as his work in the Clinical Trials Network testing the effectiveness of behavioral and pharmacological treatments in community-based treatment settings. Dr. Nunes has extensive experience with research on comorbidity of substance and psychiatric disorders, including co-occurring mood, anxiety disorders and ADHD. He also has extensive experience on the effectiveness and implementation portions of the translational spectrum, including leadership of two large multisite clinical trials in the clinical trials network, one of a computer-delivered behavioral therapy for substance use disorders (Campbell, Nunes et al., 2014) which served as the pivotal trial leading to FDA approval as a digital therapeutic, and one on treatment of opioid use disorder with XR-NTX vs buprenorphine (Lee, Nunes et al., 2019). He has extensive experience mentoring fellows and junior faculty, having recently completed two funding periods of a NIDA-funded K24 with emphasis on mentoring at NYSPI/CUMC.

Dr. Ismene Petrakis is Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and has been the Chief of Psychiatry and Mental Health Services at VA Connecticut Healthcare System for over 10 years.

Dr. Petrakis received her undergraduate degree at Northwestern University and her medical training at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine. She completed her residency training at Yale University School of Medicine and then completed an Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship, also at Yale University. Since completing her training, Dr. Petrakis has over 25 years of experience in the clinical treatment of addictive disorders, research in this field and in the education of residents, medical students, post-doctoral fellows and other mental health trainees. She is also a grant funded investigator (funding sources over the years have included NIH, VA, Department of Defense, NARSAD and the Stanley Foundation) whose research interests include developing and testing potentially effective treatments for individuals with alcohol use disorder, opioid use disorder and in those with comorbid psychiatric disorders, particularly PTSD.

Dr. Sevarino earned his MD, CM at McGill Faculty of Medicine and PhD in molecular biology at the University of Connecticut Health Center. After an internship in Internal medicine, he trained in psychiatry in the dual clinical/basic research tract at the Yale University School of Medicine. For six years thereafter, he was PI on NIH grants examining neurobiological mechanisms underlying cocaine dependence, and since then has transitioned to being a clinician-educator who remained active in clinical research as a member of the MIRECC VA Team in studies examining new treatments for substance use disorders. He was Medical Director of the Newington Mental Health Care Firm, Connecticut VA Healthcare System from Dec. 2004 through Aug. 2017. He was consulting psychiatrist to Gaylord Hospital, Wallingford from 1999 – 2009, and again 2017-2023. He now works as per diem psychiatrist at Hartford Healthcare – Rushford. His particular expertise is in treatment of the dually-diagnosed and non-opiate pharmacological management of chronic pain. He is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine. He was subspecialty certified in Psychosomatic Medicine by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology from 2009 – 2019, in Addiction Medicine by the American Board of Addiction Medicine from 2010 – 2020, and currently in Addiction Medicine by the American Board of Preventative Medicine. Dr. Sevarino serves as Medical Director for the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry (AAAP), and is a past president of that organization. He was Course Director for the AAAP Board Review Course in Addictions, which developed into the Addictions and Their Treatment Course, from 2007 – 2015. He currently co-directs AAAP’s Advanced Addiction Psychopharmacology course.

 Justine W. Welsh, MD is a child/adolescent and adult addiction psychiatrist, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine. She is the Vice Chair for Child, Adolescent, and Young Adult programs and the founder and Director of the Emory Healthcare Addiction Services. She is also the Medical Director of the Addiction Alliance of Georgia, a collaboration between Emory University and the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. Dr. Welsh also serves as the Associate Director for the University of California Irvine Train New Trainers Primary Care Addiction Medicine fellowship.

Dr. Welsh is an active advocate for expanding access to care for individuals with substance use disorder, as well as implementing innovative ways to approach recovery. She has been a board member of the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities and currently Chairs the Public Policy Committee for the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry. Her research has focused on accessing evidence-based treatment for substance use disorders across the lifespan. She has been the recipient of award and grant funding from agencies including NIDA, NIAAA, and AACAP. Her co-edited book, Treating Adolescent Substance Use: A Clinician’s Guide, was released in 2019.